Jurors in capital cases face serious challenges

The jurors who sat through eight days of testimony this summer in a capital trial for three homicides voted 12 times before reaching a sentencing decision.

But even then, the unanimous decision for a life sentence rather than execution for Michael A. Wilkins was reached for only one of the murders. With the jury deadlocked on Wilkins' culpability for the other two, Berks County Judge Scott D. Keller sentenced the 41-year-old to three consecutive life sentences.

Two jurors - a male and female who had never before served on a jury - agreed to speak anonymously about a decision-making process that typically remains behind the scenes.

Attorneys burned through more than 100 prospective jurors before agreeing on 12 and two alternates. To be selected to sit on a capital trial, all those designated had to agree they could sentence someone to death.

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That would prove to be the easy part.

Detectives had collected a bevy of evidence - surveillance video footage, fingerprints, shell casings, purchase receipts, eyewitnesses and more. But deciding a man's fate and arriving at a verdict - beyond a reasonable doubt - isn't as straightforward as the characters on "Perry Mason" or "Law & Order" suggest.

The evidence presented in court, these jurors said, created an incomplete and often confusing puzzle.

"It was one of the most stressful things I have ever done in my life," the female juror said, noting she lost sleep over the case. "It takes a toll on you. You see stuff on TV and it's nothing compared to you being there experiencing it."

The case itself was ghastly.

Wilkins - and his younger brother in a separate trial - stood accused of the retaliatory killing of two drug dealers who had ripped them off, and the torture and murder of a witness who was set on fire and her body dumped. A forensic pathologist couldn't determine whether Jennifer Velez-Negron was dead before she was set on fire.

Authorities identified Wilkins' brother in surveillance footage, where he could be seen firing the fatal shots in the 1100 block of Franklin Street in 2012.

The jurors retreated to a locked deliberation room, each with his or her own opinion as to Wilkins' guilt or innocence. Taking turns around the room, everyone shared whether they thought Wilkins was guilty and why, these jurors said.

The room boiled over with emotion, especially among the older jurors with children and grandkids the victims' age. Rafael Alequin and Dario McLemore were both 22. Wilkins' tortured girlfriend, Velez-Negron, was 26.

And then confusion set in.

If Wilkins was there but didn't shoot and kill Alequin and McLemore, was he still culpable, the jurors wanted to know. The female juror said they sent notes to the judge asking for clarity.

Under Pennsylvania law, a defendant does not have to directly carry out a murder to receive the same sentence as the one who did.

In the end, both jurors said, it just came down to what the law said.

Both jurors said it would have been easier had there been more footage. Or DNA evidence. Or tested gunshot residue. Or any host of other evidence that solves the crime in a 60-minute TV drama.

The male juror said at the trial's conclusion, "It's certainly a doozie of a first trial."

The jury deliberated a little more than five hours over two days, finding Wilkins guilty of all three murders.

"I can't imagine any other serious duty imposed by the commonwealth," Keller told jurors, who later thanked them for their service.